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I think big special effects budgets have kinda killed scifi a bit for me

Every scifi film I liked was a mixture of what they wanted to show and what they could actually build with the resources on hand, kinda made everything seem more real.

See once more, I am the opposite

For me, good sci-fi needs a solid storytelling core, preferably one which is quite intelligent and thought provoking, even if the thought is just "that's a cool concept." But around that, sci-fi for me is also about the visual spectacle, seeing something that makes me go "wow, that look's cool too."

It's why (well, part of why) I don't like Dr Who. The Aliens in that just look kind of silly (and I am a guy who likes Star Wars and Star Trek and the Fantastic Four comics and so on, so I have a high tolerance for silly looking aliens). I don't think they look fun or cool or exciting, for the most part.

The first three were awesome. Look at the art style of the ships, the tech, how they all fit together. If you ignore the fact that rebel troopers all have silly helmets in a new hope, its a fairly down to earth swashbuckling scifi universe.

Then the prequels come out and its all magical glowing stuff.

Show a guy a B-Wing, and he'll be like "Yup, that's a B-Wing." Show a guy a clone trooper X-wing thing and what the hell are they even called

I'll admit, I'm not a film buff by any means. Like, I basically see most of the big blockbusters, but I don't dive deep into the film world. My opinions are based on a far briefer relationship with movies then probably anyone else in this thread, but I really dig props and special effects over CG. The way most of the impressive shots in Dark Knight felt, the fact that serenity had a very small CG budget and still managed to make the entire thing work. Space battle at the end of Return of the Jedi being one of my favourite things, and that's all model driven. I dig things like that.

The prequels were not bad because they look bad (apart from the lightsaber fights, they actually looked pretty good. The Lightsaber fights were pretty terrible though)

They were bad because they were bad

I mean sure, none of the space battles in the prequels measures up to the X-Men trench run. But then, that's because the X-Wing trench run was a wonderfully tense, exciting bit of storytelling which also looked cool, which they could have done with CGI in the prequels but didn't because the prequels sucked. Also because people are eager to use CGI as much as they can whereas practical effects still have them beat in many ways. But that's not something inherent to a bigger budget, just a poor film-making choice.

As for the difference between a X-Wing and a Clone Trooper proto X-Wing (which makes little sense in the background but wev), yeah the X-Wing looks better. But that's because the X-Wing is a better design, not because it was a miniature and the Clone Trooper starfighter was CGI.

The new Star Trek movie had very modern looking SFX, for example, and it looked really cool. So did Tron: Legacy.

I like science fiction movies to have big budgets but use primarily real things supplemented by CGI.

Fucking star wars.

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I'll admit, I'm not a film buff by any means. Like, I basically see most of the big blockbusters, but I don't dive deep into the film world. My opinions are based on a far briefer relationship with movies then probably anyone else in this thread, but I really dig props and special effects over CG. The way most of the impressive shots in Dark Knight felt, the fact that serenity had a very small CG budget and still managed to make the entire thing work. Space battle at the end of Return of the Jedi being one of my favourite things, and that's all model driven. I dig things like that.

Yeah, I can get behind that.

I was kind of lost because I didn't know if you were talking about Drive-In style B-Movies or what.

I'll admit, I'm not a film buff by any means. Like, I basically see most of the big blockbusters, but I don't dive deep into the film world. My opinions are based on a far briefer relationship with movies then probably anyone else in this thread, but I really dig props and special effects over CG. The way most of the impressive shots in Dark Knight felt, the fact that serenity had a very small CG budget and still managed to make the entire thing work. Space battle at the end of Return of the Jedi being one of my favourite things, and that's all model driven. I dig things like that.

Yeah, I can get behind that.

I was kind of lost because I didn't know if you were talking about Drive-In style B-Movies or what.

I'm only 21, those kinda things were before my time. I was raised on a diet of Star Wars, Aliens and Disney films, so my film tastes are kinda weird.

But sometimes the amount of CG is distracting because it's more LOOK SPECIAL EFFECTS instead of just blending into the background and being realistic

The Star Wars prequels were like that, Lucas got so caught up with trying to fully realize his worlds that he ended up gilding the lily

Oh yeah I totally get that

Generally it's best to make everything you can as real as possible and then do CGI on top. In Tron: Legacy they actually made costumes with glowing piping, set up as much of the sets as they could, did all the lighting as physically as possible, and then let the CGI dudes work with what they shot. And it really shows, because it looks great.

The Star Wars Prequels do the opposite and it all looks a bit fake and plastic-y. Like when they just throw in more spaceships and lasers and explosions in the battle above Coruscant and it ends up being really difficult to focus on what is going on through all the shit flying around.

Well I think that is poor direction more than always being poor design.

I mean, the Millennium Falcon is iconic and looks great, even though when you look at it there's a lot going on with the ship and all the stuff all over it.

But it's okay, because when we see the Falcon it's in the center of the screen, and there's not too much going on other than it being there and flying around, so we focus on it and and think "yeah that's cool"

It's not like the Jedi Starfighter is any more crazy looking, but surrounded by so much shit at all times you just can't see it. Because nobody said "no, just give it some space to be in."

Yea, Quoth has it. Spend too much time trying to make things real with CGI and you get something that always seems kinda fakey. Stick some twigs on a box, give it a lick of paint and film it from the right angle and you have a darn sexy space ship.